Jenny Erpenbeck: Memory and Forgetting, Home and Exile

5 MayConversation

Man Booker Prize winner Richard Flanagan meets celebrated author Jenny Erpenbeck (Go, Went, Gone and The End of Days) for a broad-ranging discussion about the importance of memory, family and heritage in her writing. Jenny sheds light on her personal history as the granddaughter of leading figures in East Germany’s literary establishment and the Communist Party. She also discusses the importance of music and theatre in her stories, and how the ideas of home and exile underscore her influential body of work.

Jenny Erpenbeck is the bestselling author of The Old Child & The Book of Words, Visitation and The End of Days, which won the 2014 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, and Go, Went, Gone, which was longlisted for the International Man Booker Prize. The New Yorker's James Wood has praised her “classical restraint”, comparing her to JM Coetzee, VS Naipul and Teju Cole. The Guardian says, “reading Erpenbeck always produces a shiver of metaphysical vertigo. Her wisdom feels uncannily ancient...shot through with an insight that almost blinds.” Her fiction is published in 27 languages.

Richard Flanagan was born in Tasmania. His novels Death of a River Guide, The Sound of One Hand Clapping, Gould’s Book of Fish, The Unknown Terrorist, Wanting, The Narrow Road to the Deep North and First Person have received numerous honours and are published in 42 countries. He won the Man Booker Prize for The Narrow Road to the Deep North in 2014.